Sleeping Dogs (1997)
A master jewel thief in 21st century Los Angeles targets the illegal emerald smuggling operations of a highly-connected crime syndicate. During what he believes to be a routine heist, cat burglar Harry Maxwell discovers that his target, notorious criminal Sanchez Boon is also the target of a police raid. In attempting to evade both the law and Boon's well-armed men, Harry meets Pandora Grimes, one of dozens of young women Boon kidnapped to work in his factory. When Boon sets a group of social deviants free and hijacks a space transport ship and its crew, only Harry and Pandora's cunning can save the hundreds of innocent people aboard.
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If you like bad movies, this is like the Citizen Kane of bad movies. It's sci-fi meets Miami Vice meets Plan 9 from Outer Space. It stars Scott McNeil, Canadian Voice Actor, as Harry Maxwell, an aging jewel-thief who actually looks about 20 years old and C. Thomas Howell who had a great time chewing the scenery as Sanchez Boon, the Emerald lord (drugs are so 5 minutes ago in the future).There are lots of seedy characters, buxom women, some gratuitous nudity and buckets of bullets that fly freely in close quarters and miss their intended targets. The dialogue is well.. really bad. The acting, aside from the lead characters, is well.. really, really bad. Plan 9 had better acting. Best scene: Harry Maxwell knocks out buxom blond heroine, aptly named, Pandora to save her life. The plot undulates like a belly dancer. Just when you're sure what's going on, it slithers somewhere else. The story ends but the movie keeps rolling. There is one more, then one more scene tacked on like a bad toupee. It's a real treat for those who like to wince. I would highly recommend renting it. It's funny, it's awful, it's got lots of eye candy for all and some things you just gotta see once!
I agree, C Thomas Howell is brilliant as Sanchez. I could have done without the excessive bad language but screen writers nowadays seem to have those F-words built into their scripts and then fit any other words around them. I seem to remember seeing Matt Frewer as a henchman but he doesn't seem to appear in the above cast list.
The story is both engrossing and entertaining. C Thomas Howell is a real ham throughout and his interpretation of Sanchez Boone is hilarious. If not for his talent and the steamy love scene it wouldn't receive my thumbs up. Way to go Michael Bafaro for salvaging an otherwise drab production.
Typical Simauldi's casting a leading actor (Howell) as a villian and unknown canadian actor as a lead. Well, only if he casted a more tougher and macho looking guy as the lead because the actor is kind of bland. But as for Howell, who seems to be doing low-grade film lately, really chews up the role of Sanchez Boone, a eccentric bad guy and really goes over the top on the role. See it if you are a Howell fan, otherwise beware. The same set and Howell was used in DEAD FIRE the same year.